of a clarification of the rule, what john boehner has said and also some of the other senior republicans, is that is something to take up with the transition team. greg waldron is in charge of it. there is also the republican study committee. the current chairman is tom price. it appears the new chairman is going to be congressman jordan. they are looking at some rule changes also, but the straight answer to your question is, in my outreach efforts, i am being very positively received for my chairmanship in terms of the rule -- that is something the transition team will make or recommendation to the leadership and to the full conference.

>> election night, as john boehner was finishing his speech, we happen to notice you at the bottom of the stage shaking hands with presumptive ehner.r braine >> a relationship with him is very cordial. we work together in the education committee and we have are together when he was majority leader and in the minority leadership position. we are both very positive, and i would say we are both adults. we have both been around the block a little bit, and know that it is not necessarily what is good for either one of us individually, it is what is good for the entire republican conference. we have a very positive, open

relationship. as to why i was in washington, in 1994, i stayed in my district on election night, and i did not think it would ever go back into the minority, but as we got closer to this election and it looked like we might get back in the majority, i said i wanted to be in washington to share in that moment. i was very pleased to be there with pete sessions and kevin mccarthy and then to go over to the hotel when they made the big announcement. i just wanted to be there to share in its, because i had a feeling that we were going to win and win big. i want to be part of that celebration. in terms of my congratulations to the speaker to be john boehner, i am one of the first persons to speak with him and i

just congratulated to him and told him to get a little bit of rest. i cannot tell you how many campaign stops he has made, but he probably set our record -- set a record four campaign stops for members of congress. i told him and his wife to go and get some rest and kind of enjoy the moment, because you will not have too many like that. >> mr. barton, the committee has a broad jurisdiction. where will attacking telecom commission's fault on the priority list? >> the number one immediate priority is going to be health care because of the emphasis on repealing obamacare and replacing it with something that is much more in tune with what the american people want.

tele-communications will be a high priority. especially preventing the fcc from regulating the internet's. as i said earlier, if we can put together a bipartisan reform package, i think that would be something that we could move. health care will be number one. i would say energy and stelco would be equal at no. 2, and oversight -- we are one of the committees that has a specific overside subcommittee. it is going to be very, very busy, just having oversight over the various agencies in the obama administration within the jurisdiction of the energy and commerce committee. >> you recently side that -- recently said that privacy is an issue to you. would you pick up where mr.

left's and mr. boucher off? >> i was a little bit surprised or have been, that we have not moved a privacy bill in this congress. we have probably one more week in the land up, but i doubt there is going to be a privacy bill come out that quickly. that is certainly something we can work with our friends on the democratic side on a bipartisan basis. as you pointed out, ed markey, bobby rush, cliff stearns, mary bono, a number of republicans and democrats are very interested in that. i think that is something that we can work on. facebook has recently admitted that some of their information on individuals was used without

facebook permission by a client. we have had a number of other companies, depending on who you believe, that consciously or inadvertently allowed a very private information to be disseminated to marketers and folks without the permission of the individuals. i think privacy is one of those issues that is gaining in importance and is something that certainly could be addressed, if we can get the right coalition together. as chairman, i would be very willing to legislate in that area. >> he talked about coalitions. in your letter to incoming freshmen campaigning for the chairmanship, you have written ago when i am chairman, you won't find many democrats applauding campaignnetwork.org

>> that -- you won't find many democrats of plotting." >> it goes without saying when you are president of your party, you are not as aggressive in overseeing your presidential executive agencies as when the president is of the opposition. chairman waxman and chairman dingell are both very diligent overseer's, but that focus their oversight out into the country. there really did not adequately oversee the obama administration. we are not going to be punitive, but we are going to insist that all these executive orders and pending regulations and some of the actions that the epa and the

fcc and the fda have initiated will have to come before congress in an open and transparent fashion and justify that. those are the folks who will be unhappy. i don't think the democrats on the committee will be unhappy because they will be part of the process and fully engage. the hearings will be fair and balanced, and it will be their decision whether to participate. my guess is that they will. >> you mentioned the fcc and chairman genachowski's proposal to reclassify broadband katula telecommunication service area the thing that will be under more pressure to move forward on that with the chances of a net of neutrality bill coming out of congress? you mentioned legislation.

will you move legislation to block them from doing that? >> i would think that they can read election returns as well as anybody. the three democratic commissioners on the fcc are very bright people. i have a positive personal relationship with all three of them. i would think that seeing that republicans are gaining six or seven seats in the senate, and as of this program, i think we are at 63 or 64 house seats, that they would see the wisdom of not trying to regulate the .nternet under title t2 i am certainly willing in conjunction with coronation with john maynard and eric cantor, moving the bill quickly that says they cannot. i would think they could read the tea leaves as well as anybody and know that is something they should not go forward with.

>> on election night here on c- span, we were taking calls all night, as you well know. we were talking about the legislative agenda of the republicans and democrats. a couple of callers brought up the issue of net neutrality. i want to play one for you and get your response. >> and 20 years old and i want to talk about a specific issue that is often overlooked by both parties, which is net neutrality. this is one of the biggest issues of overtime, definitely a first amendment issue. i think republicans seem to talk about how they want to keep the constitution, and that is there for running thing. i noticed the republicans do republicans often overlook this as an issue and would rather let the internet become a tiered. >> i wish i had been on and that

young man was asking his -- engaged in his phone call. republicans have insisted since the telecommunications act of 1996 that the internet be open and free and accessible to any and all comers. we do not allow any taxation of the internet. we have an open access policy. internet use has exploded, as has cell phone use. i think our policy of allowing the private sector to develop it under rules and regulations developed by the fcc, they are open and transparent. as word very, very well. this concept of net neutrality is a little bit of a misnomer. what it means in practice, if the fcc were to implement, is that the federal government could regulate the internet.

i don't think that caller wants the internet regulated by the sec, and i know the new republican majority on the house side does not want the internet regulated by the fcc. so we have a policy that is working very well. in the old colloquial phrase of ain't broke, don't fix it. >> do you think there needs to be any legislation to clarify their authority? should have some rules in overseeing what broadband do?viders t >> that is a rephrasing of the question we have already had several times. the sec tried to stipulate that it could regulate and could command a private company, i

believe it was comcast, and tell them how to manage their network. the court said no, that under the telecommunications act, you do not have that authority. the response of chairman genachowski to that court decision has been to threaten to ii of thender a titlei communications act. that section that regulates the old hard-line telephone service, going back to 1930's and 1940's, when you had a monopoly situation because of technology and geography, and telephone service was considered to be a natural monopoly, so you had to regulate it to keep the companies from exercising too much market power and too much

economic power over their subscribers. you don't have that situation with the internet. you have numerous broadband providers, both in terms of wireless and wired, and very robust competition providing new services almost on a weekly basis. there is just not the necessity to regulate under title ii. if necessary, we will move a bill very quickly and it will be a bipartisan bill. in the current congress, every republican from john boehner on down has signed a letter that we should not regulate the internet under title ii. i think in the neighborhood of 60 democrats in this congress have signed that letter or a very similar letter. there is obviously a bipartisan majority against regulating

broadband under title to of the federal communications act. >> you mentioned oversight would be an important role of the committee. the ftc recently informed global it was dropping in investigation into what google called the mistaken collection of information from unsecured wife by networks -- unsecured wifi networks. is that something you think your committee would look into if you were chairman? >> again, that is very similar to a question about privacy that you have already asked in this interview. the answer to that is yes. the global thing is very troubling -- the google thing is very troubling. in that case, there appears to have been a conscious effort to collect information. google said it was inadvertent, but it was not just kind of

accidentally gathered. i do think that is something that we could look at. i know congressman markey is concerned about it on the democrat side. chairman waxman is concerned about it. that is something in the next congress that we certainly could look at and maybe put together a bill to prevent that kind of activity from happening in the future. >> rick boucher, an active , lost.t what does his loss due to the community, in your view? >> i am republican and i am always happy to get more republicans and to have a majority, and obviously the gentleman who won over rick is

to be congratulated for his victory. when you take aside the politics and the mathematics, as a person, there is not a better person in congress than rick boucher. also energy policy and many of the legal aspects, he is going to be really missed. he it is chairman on the energy committee and was active on the judiciary committee. a very bright person, very flexible, and somebody that was willing to work across i'll. i had the privilege when i was subcommittee chairman to have him as my ranking member on the energy subcommittee. he was just very, very good

person to work with. on the political side, i welcome his successor as a part of the republican new majority. take the politics out of it, and rick boucher is one of the good folks and is an example of what being a good congressman is. he will be missed as a person, but again, on the political side of it, the bigger the republican majority, the better. i am certainly pleased that we have a new republican in that district. >> another big issue is this need for spectrum for mobile broadband and lots of other uses. there are various schools --

feelings on dealing with spectrum. one calls for reallocating a chunk of spectrum known as the d-block for a communications network. reduce stand on that issue? >> that is a very vexing issue, a very technical issue. depending on your view of government, there are various proposals on how to deal with it. it is obvious that we need adequate spectrum for public safety officials. one way to do it is just to allocate and mandate it. there are other proposals out there to have an incentive option where you have -- create some incentive for the winner of the auction. i am not an advocate of a

mandate. i have advocated as have almost all republicans for several years to have an auction with no strings attached, and then try to deal with the spectrum allocation for public safety in a different way. i am not an electrical engineer, so i don't really have the technical expertise to go into various types of spectrum and the band with an all of that. this is obviously something that has been festering for a while, and it is something that we would like to see successfully solved here in the next two years, if possible. >> if you were chairman, could you see the ceo's of companies such as facebook and google coming to testify on issues such as privacy in front of the committee? >> i think you could almost

guarantee that. just as when i said earlier in the interview that i don't believe chairman waxman and chairman dingell have been aggressive in oversight over the obama administration, if they had focused their guns on the private sector, so to speak, it does not mean as a republican majority that we are just going to focus on the executive branch or president obama us cabinet and not take a look at the private sector. use an example, when i was chairman back in 2005 and 2006, we were very aggressive and oversight of british petroleum. they had had an accident in their pipeline from the north slope and alaska, and we had a number of hearings and ended up passing new legislation giving the federal energy regulatory committee additional authority

to inspect and regulate the safety aspects of the pipeline systems, not just in alaska but everywhere in the united states. as a consequence of their negligence -- i am a pre mark -- free-market private sector congressman. i believe in free market capitalism, but having said that, you have to have aggressive oversight over the private sector to make sure that they did not develop too much market power and that they do play by the rules. back in the 1930's, president hoover is alleged to have said the worst thing about capitalism is the capitalists. as servants of the american people, republicans in the majority in the house have a responsibility to the country to not only keep an eye on the obama administration, we also

have to make sure that the private sector plays by the rules. i can assure you we will do that in the energy committee, and john boehner, in a conference call earlier, has assured the incoming chairman of the new committees that we are going to in every committee in overseeing the obama administration and also the private sector's committees at each is responsible for. >> if you are unsuccessful in your bid to become chairman, i am assuming you will stay on the committee, and would you seek a subcommittee chairmanship, and if so, which one? >> that is a very rhetorical question. i am fully engaged in being successful in convincing the republican conference and the leadership to give me the

privilege to be the full committee chairman, so i am going to focus my efforts on being full committee chairman. i am very confident that i will be successful in that effort, so i am not going to speculate on what happens if that is not successful, because i think it will be successful. >> how would a chairmanship differ from that of [unintelligible] >> that is a very speculative question. fred and i are very good friends. we sit side-by-side for a number of years. he and his family are lovely people, just delightful people. i think the differences between congressman upton and myself, i

am a consistent conservative across the board. fred tends to be somewhat more moderate. you would have a little bit of a philosophical difference, perhaps. i have also been chairman for one term, and i think would be able to hit the ground running. fred has served as subcommittee chairman on a number of subcommittees, circled -- so he certainly has leadership at the subcommittee level. the american people have given us a two-year lease to be in the majority in congress, and i think we should put our best team on the field for the next two years. i think that while fred is very competent and well qualified, my experience is at a higher level than his and i would be much

more able immediately to run the committee in an effective fashion. >> just to make it known, we have invited congressman fred upton to appear on this program as well. ranking republican on the energy and commerce committee and potential chairman, joe barton, thank you as always for being on "the communicators." juliana grunwald, thank you as well. >> tomorrow on "newsmakers," we talk about the chances of an ever oil spill taking place in the u.s. >> i cannot put a percentage on it, but we have all learned is the percentage is not zero. there have been over 4000 holes dug in the gulf, just in deep

water. there was one blowout. those are not 50-50 odds. those are low odds, but what i think people did not recognize is that even though it might only happen once, it could have enormous consequences. that is why we are all legitimately concerned about driving up the risk that it could happen again. is it possible it could happen again? absolutely. when you have an unknown reservoirs', you have exploratory drilling, you have advanced technologies, and you have human beings involved, there is a chance that something could go bad. i think we are already learning to some extent that what happened with the deepwater horizon was unfortunately a perfect storm of both mechanical and human error. >> you can see the entire interview on "newsmakers."

>> on monday, the national oil spill commission holds a two-day public hearing on the cause of the rig explosion on april 20. we will look at preliminary findings on boat well blowout. live coverage, starting at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. >> the supreme court heard arguments in schwarzenegger versus entertainment merchants, which challenges and entertainment law begich of california law banning sales of video games to children under the age of 18. this is about an hour. 81488. >> may it please the court. the california law issued today before this court differs from the new york law issued in jennsberg in one respect.

when new york was concerned with minors with sexual material outside the >> california is no less concerned with the deviant level of violence, that can be no less harmful to the development of minors. minor's access to such material outside of a parent, it did so with two fundamental reasons applicable this morning in this case. first, this rule permits parent's came to authority in their household to help in the upbringing of thinker children. this promotes the state's independent interest in helping parents protect the well-being of children in those instances when parents cannot be present. this morning, california asked this court to adopt a rule of law that permits states to restrict minor's